Bloglash (n.)

Last week’s publication of Iain Dale’s list of the top 500 UK political blogs has sparked some criticism - the funniest is here at mediocracy (hat-tip: Tim Worstall), the most acute is here at Stumbling and Mumbling:

… there's something nasty about the very notion that blogs can be ranked on a simple single ordering. The overwhelming virtue of the blogosphere is its diversity. And the many things that make a good blog are to some extent incompatible; originality versus consistency; passion versus intellectual rigour; number of posts versus quality of individual posts; brevity versus weight of evidence; wit versus gravitas, and so on.

These trade-offs mean the quality of blogs is just incommensurable - we can't rank them. … And even if we can each rank our own preferences, what meaning is there to an aggregate ranking? To pretend there is one is to commit the error that libertarians have often accused utilitarians of making - of believing preferences can be easily aggregated when they cannot be. It's symptomatic of the intellectual decline of the Conservative party that one of its cheerleaders should make this error.

Stephen Tall is 55th.

Iain's little list

Iain Dale has now published the official list of the top 100 Lib Dem blogs, and I’m runner-up - and I can think of few bloggers against whom I’m more happy to run up than Jonathan Calder’s Liberal England. He is indeed the Lib Dem blogfather.

Here’s what Iain wrote about me, myself and I:

Stephen Tall has emerged in the last twelve months as a key player in the Liberal Democrat blogosphere. His own A Liberal Goes a Long Way blog won last year’s Liberal Democrat blog of the year, awarded by the Libdems at their party conference, and he has become a familiar face as the LibDem blogger who most appears on the media. Recently he has taken over as commissioning editor of LibDem Voice, which, it is to be hoped, does not see a decline in his own blog. Stephen is not one to write short snappy posts. He has an erudite, if sometimes academic, style, which means that his posts have a clear beginning, middleand end. He’s a blogger who makes the reader think about their own position on an issue, and you can hardly pay a higher compliment than that.

It is of course more than possible that my involvement with Lib Dem Voice has seen a decline in the quality of both blogs.

One of the chapters which appears in Iain’s eponymous Guide To Political Blogging In The UK is written by me, and focuses on the state of Lib Dem blogging. Or, perhaps more accurately, looks at the state of blogging through a Lib Dem prism. (Sorry, Iain - are references to geometric shapes too academic?)

Anyway, if you want to buy it, you can do so by clicking on this Amazon link - in which case you’ll earn the Lib Dems some commission, an irony I’m sure Iain will enjoy.

***

The state of Lib Dem blogging in the UK

Anyone still harbouring the hackneyed view that Liberal Democrats are a bunch of equivocating well-on-the-one-hand-but-on-the-other nicebodies, who wouldn’t say boo to an organic free-range goose, should visit www.libdemblogs.co.uk.

There you will find aggregated each day for your reading pleasure the opinionated postings of over 130 Lib Dems, displaying a frenetic range of topic, content and style. Punchy op-ed commentary on the big national and international issues of the day nestles alongside tales of potholes, pedestrian crossings and planning applications in Coketown.

It is emblematic of Lib Dem thinking that this should be so: the local and global are too intrinsically intertwined for it not to be. Indeed, the Lib Dem blogs ‘Aggregator’ is itself a signature of liberalism: diverse individual thinking finding strengthened expression through a collective community venture.

A year ago, at our 2006 conference in Brighton, the Lib Dems became the first national party to recognise the blogging fraternity - and it is a fraternity; the scarcity of women unhealthily skews the blogosphere - launching an inaugural ‘Blog of the Year’ award, which earned national media coverage.

But, in fact, it was eight months earlier that Lib Dem blogs first made their mark, during the leadership contest sparked by Charles Kennedy’s resignation. The momentum and profile of initial-outsider Chris Huhne’s campaign was boosted by declarations of support from some leading Lib Dem bloggers, inspiring a ‘Bloggers for Huhne’ section on his campaign website. Ever since, the party has taken increasing time and effort to reach out to bloggers - not simply through the awards ceremony, but also by giving access to press conferences, and interviews with senior MPs, such as Ed Davey and Ming Campbell.

Does this present a danger to those of us who blog? Should we be concerned that, as the party seeks to embrace us, we’ll become smothered? Clearly that’s a risk, but then any new phenomenon is laden with risks. Bloggers who compromise themselves, who sacrifice their authentic independence for the vicarious thrill of being among the favoured élite, lose their credibility - as those who read, and post to, their blogs will be swift to point out.

Besides, the Lib Dems are not that kind of party. I recall the media office phoning to say they had suggested Sky News contact me for a vox pop following a controversial conference vote. “Is there a particular line the party wants to get across?” I asked. (I wasn’t offering to be their patsy, but I thought I’d find out just the same.) “It’s entirely up to you; they want to hear from someone a bit independent,” came the reply. So much for Svengalian spin-doctors: Peter Mandelson would have been turning in his Euro-gravy.

In any case, those of us who sit at a computer should beware of turning into Mr Pooter. It is easy to exaggerate the importance of blogs, their novelty perhaps obscuring the fact that they remain a niche. Even the über-blogs, like Iain Dale’s and Guido Fawkes’, attract around 250,000 unique visitors each month. Yes, it’s impressive… but that’s the same number as pay for their copy of The Independent, the UK’s lowest circulation national newspaper, each and every day. (The nearest comparison for my blog is probably the Biggleswade Chronicle.)

Perhaps the biggest function which blogs perform is the influence they are beginning to exert on the mainstream media. Blogging is prime retail for journalists: it is an easy and unending source of news stories and diary snippets. To politicians, this can spell either manna from heaven, or gaffes from hell.

In the former camp, resides Lynne Featherstone, the Lib Dem MP for Hornsey and Wood Green, who ousted the Labour incumbent at the 2005 general election with a huge 14.6 per cent swing. Alongside the usual hard slog of ‘pavement politics’, and a formidably well-organised campaign, her profile was pepped up by her sparky, feisty blog. The outspoken blog of Welsh Assembly member Peter Black has earned him copious media coverage, especially in the febrile weeks after May’s inconclusive election results, as he chronicled the twists and turns of the coalition negotiations.

But it doesn’t always work to the good. When Jody Dunn, the Lib Dem candidate in the 2004 Hartlepool by-election, blogged that she had canvassing a street whose residents were “either drunk, flanked by an ugly dog, or undressed”, Labour made the most of her quip, and clung on to the seat.

Perhaps it is because the rewards do not yet outweigh the risks that few Lib Dem Parliamentarians are bloggers. In addition to Lynne, only three MPs have so far been taken by the blogging muse - John Hemming, Adrian Sanders and Steve Webb [and now Sandra Gidley has resumed her blog, too, making four] – as well as two MEPs, Sajjad Karim and Graham Watson, and one peer, Lord Eric Avebury.

Yet alongside this understandable caution, there may be at least as much prioritisation. Elected representatives, at local or national level, may well ponder if blogging is the best use of their campaigning time - compared, say, to producing regular newsletters delivered through every door, or holding surgeries for residents, or simply ensuring they’re keeping on top of their casework. After all, it’s likely your blog will be read chiefly by the cognoscenti in your patch, both your supporters and your opponents. If you’re serious about winning votes you need to be in touch with precisely those people who are least likely casually to surf their way to your blog, and even less likely to read your latest, learned disquisitions on the EU treaty referendum, or the need for electoral reform.

The lesson is simple (the best lessons usually are): blog if you want to, not because you feel you have to. If you find it a chore, and resent the time it takes, your apathy will seep through the screen. It is the enthusiasm of the top bloggers - their drive to connect with their readers - which makes them work.

And if you have that passion, your blog can become a powerful campaigning tool; or it can simply be your space to re-cast your half-formed thoughts into something semi-coherent for public consumption. Either way, fasten your seatbelts, prepare for take-off, and welcome to the Lib Dem blogosphere.

***

Erm, thanks, I think

I’ve gone two better than Jonathan Calder, it seems - A Liberal Goes A Long Way is, according to Tory uber-blogger, Iain Dale, the most under-rated political blog in the UK. Which is either a rather sweet accolade, or a bit of a back-handed compliment, depending on how you look at it.

Iain suggests - and who am I to disagree? - that my gaff, and the other nine he lists “should be in the top echelons of any blogging list due to their consistently high quality of output, but don't get the attention they deserve.”

It’s true I certainly don’t have anything like the readership of Iain, Guido, Tim, Da Fink et al. Partly that’s because Lib Dem and liberal-leaning blogs have a smaller readership to begin with; it’s also, I suspect, because I don’t abide by the blogging maxim: a little and often. (Ironically enough, that was also my mum’s advice to us when we felt too ill to eat anything.)

I’m a fairly regular blogger, but my output is nowhere near as frenetic as my party colleagues, Nich, Paul or Jonathan himself. All the more so since I became commissioning editor at Lib Dem Voice, and started dividing my blogging time between the two.

It is, to an extent, a conscious decision. I love writing, but I only want to write about what I want to write about - I don’t ever want to feel compelled to write because of others’ expectations. Blogging should never become a tyranny.

And the trouble with building up a large readership is that your obligations start subtly to change. No longer are you thinking, “What do I want to get off my chest?” You start asking instead, “What will my readers be expecting from me?” Not my cup of tea, I’m afraid.

None of which is a dig at Iain. I’ve met him, I like him, I respect him. He has also been generous to me and other Lib Dem bloggers in promoting our endeavours to his massed army of readers (even if half of them are green-ink-smeared, right-wing weirdos).

That said, I was surprised when he was nominated as ‘political commentator of the year’ in the prestigious House Magazine / Sky News Parliamentary Awards earlier this year. Because Iain is not an objective analyst of the political world: he’s a partisan Tory who occasionally criticises his own party, and even more occasionally praises other parties. Nothing wrong with that. But let’s not confuse political commentary with campaigning agitprop.

I have a lot of admiration - genuinely - for those bloggers who respond instantly to the latest news stories with their visceral, gut reactions. But it isn’t for me (and here I add the word beloved by wriggling lawyers - normally). Just as I accept the need for rolling news coverage, but prefer to watch Newsnight.

This self-indulgent navel-gazing posting is, perhaps, emblematic of a Lib Dem mindset: the wish to stay aloof, exclusive, pure, rather than be bespoiled by the grubby compromises of mass popularity and responsibility. Or perhaps I’m just too lazy to commit to penning a minimum of three posts a day, and to the drudgery of adding reciprocal links across the blogosphere.

At any rate, I guess I’d rather be under-rated than over-rated. So thanks, Iain.

How now Brown cowed

So, who did leak the story of Gordon Brown’s approach to the Lib Dems? Iain Dale reckons it was Paddy Ashdown who spilled the beans to Guardian editor Alan Rushbridger:

The interesting thing here is that the whole thing is Paddy Ashdown's fault. If he hadn't leaked the offer to Alan Rusbridger on Tuesday evening, the whole sorry series of events might never have come to light.

Fellow blogger (and former lobby journalist) Paul Linford repeats the allegation here. These are the only two places where I’ve seen this rumour spread, and in neither case do they substantiate why they believe it was Paddy wot leaked it.

To me (and, come to that, the BBC’s Nick Robinson) it seems pretty clear the only person with something to gain from leaking this news was Team Gordon. So why heap the blame on Paddy?

Detritus: 18 Doughty Street, liberal blogging and David Cameron

Let’s get the plugs out of the way straight off - if you want to watch last night’s Blogger TV on 18 Doughty Street, in which I appeared alongside fellow Lib Dem blogger Andy Mayer, click here.

To my left, geographically and politically, was Chris Ames, author of the excellent Iraq Dossier website, which “is dedicated to telling the truth about the British government's September 2002 dossier Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction - that it was, after all, "sexed-up" by the government's spin doctors.” Do visit it.

Slightly to my surprise we spent a good chunk of the early part of the programme discussing the state of the Lib Dem ‘blogosphere’ with über-blogging presenter Iain Dale.

And here I must issue a mea culpa - when asked to name a new blogger who had caught my attention I correctly named Tom Papworth at Liberal Polemic. I then incorrectly suggested he was the Lib Dem candidate in Folkestone. The T.P. who hopes to take over Michael Howard’s constituency is of course Toby Philpott at Liberal Legend - who also has a very good blog. Apologies to them both.

There are also lots of other good new blogs which I didn’t have chance to mention, though I’m trying to highlight the best postings via the ‘Golden Dozen’ round-ups on Lib Dem Voice. [That’s enough grovelling. - Ed.]

A question which occurred to me (pretty much as I was speaking) is how the Lib Dems can fit blogging into our traditional community politics and engagement. The Internet is a highly paradoxical force. In one sense it atomises us, as we each bury our heads behind our own individual computer screens, reading or writing our transient e-phemera.

And yet there is a virtual blogging community. We get to know each other through our articles - begin to understand what motivates, angers, delights or interests us - and probably reveal far more about ourselves than we ever do in person to fellow Lib Dems in our local constituency parties.

How can we combine pavement politics with virtual politics? Flock Together has begun the process, together with the ever-growing number of Liberal Drinks around the country. And Facebook is connecting party members at a frighteningly exponential rate. (Though I still don’t really understand what it’s for - if ever there were a sign I’m getting old…)

Websites such as Neighbourhood Fix-It perhaps point the most powerful way ahead - why phone or e-mail your local councillor to report a pot-hole or faulty street-light if you can alert the local council directly? If it takes off, this site has the potential to transform the relationship between residents and councils, as each problem is logged and residents track how long it takes the council to respond.

Perhaps councillors will become less of a glorified Yellow Pages for those with a gripe, and take more responsibility for ensuring local government systems are geared-up to cope with residents-as-consumers?

PS: last night’s BloggerTV also had an interesting discussion of David Cameron in which Iain Dale accepts that ConservativeHome’s traditional right-wing agenda is more in tune with most Tory members than Mr Cameron’s Blair-lite direction of travel.

Iain reckons this won’t matter for as long as Mr Cameron is seen to be a winner. For the record, I half-agree - the Tory Party is desperately hungry to beat Labour, which is why Tory traditionalists are currently biting their tongues... at least for as long as Mr Cameron is in the ascendant.

However, at some point the party’s hunger to beat Labour must give way to a hunger to form a Conservative government. And I cannot see Mr Cameron rousing the Tory faithful with (eg) a pledge to increase taxes on air travel. How he squares this circle is the great unknown of the current Tory mini-revival.

Sunday best

The latest best-of-the-Lib-Dem-blogosphere's 'Golden Dozen' is now up and ready for your viewing pleasure here at Lib Dem Voice.

Meanwhile, I'm touched to have been tagged by Iain Dale for the latest meme, the so-called 'Thogger Awards' (Thinking Bloggers). Unfortunately, this means I must now nominate the five bloggers who make me think most.

Hang on, this needs some careful thought. Try me again tomorrow.

PS: I am, of course, open to bribes.

You wait ages for one Lib Dem poll...

Over at Iain Dale’s gaff, you can choose which Lib Dem MP you think has fared best in 2006 in his latest poll.

At the moment, Lembit Öpik appears to be storming to victory, based (I am sure) solely on his political achievements these past 12 months. Perhaps this signifies the end of the ‘Curse of Lembit’?

I voted for Chris Huhne. I thought I should do so once in 2006. And he has - without doubt - been the MP who has most made their mark on the party for the right reasons this year.

Cleggy live and unleashed - UPDATED

Housewives' favourite*, Nick Clegg, was on Iain Dale's Vox Politix show last night, over at 18 Doughty Street.

UPDATE: If you missed the live performance, I'm reliably informed by Iain Dale that you can watch again by clicking here. In my view, it's especially worth watching for the bit where Nick refers to me as "the great blogger".

* I understand he is also Lib Dem Shadow Home Secretary.

Uphill, done Dale

Who can refuse once tagged by Iain Dale? Okay, let’s leave that question hanging... in the meantime here’s my list of:

Top 10 things I would never do

10. listen to the weather forecast and remember anything about it 5 minutes later;
9. wear white socks;
8. return a library book on time;
7. watch any programme involving Robert Kilroy-Slick (unless he’s being mocked);
6. look forward to turning 30;
5. I would never do without my wi-fi broadband;
4. listen to Quote Unquote;
3. eat an olive (despite friends’ insistence that I must like them really);
2. swear in front of my parents;
1. speak ill of a fellow liberal.

Number 11 of course is: inflict this meme on anyone else. But if you’re feeling short of blogging inspiration - or, like Iain, haven’t fulfilled your statutory five blog posts before lunchtime - then go the heck for it.

PS: was just tooo hectic to blog on Monday, partly ‘cos I dashed down to London to guest again on Iain’s Vox Politix show on 18 Doughty Street, alongside Devil’s Kitchen (Chris Mounsey), Ross Clark and Ashley Crossley.

If you missed it because you were otherwise occupied - as if - you can Watch Again by clicking here, and choosing the show labelled ‘Local Government Finance (20/11/2006)’. Even if I have been credited as Stephen Toole… (I’ve been called worse.)

New vidcast: behind the ferns at Doughty Street

As promised, here's my behind-the-scenes peek into 18 Doughty Street filmed before and after my guest appearance on Iain Dale's Vox Politix. (Which, ahem, you can watch again here.)

Enjoy the high-quality production, well-lit intro, and seamless editing.



PS: or you can watch it on YouTube here.